No Vote for the Seamless Shroud

Anyone motivated by the principles of Catholic Social
Teaching, and/or the Consistent Life Ethic, should be used to a certain degree
of political homelessness. Knowing the practical impossibility of being
presented with any candidate for a major office who fully and consistently
espouses such principles, it is often all we can do, in relation to the
political process, to inch that process relatively closer to a more consistent
respect for the dignity of all – young and old, rich and poor, born and unborn,
citizen and foreigner, imprisoned and free, black and brown and white and so
on. But now, with two major-party presidential nominees who cannot reasonably
be described as “pro-life” or
“pro-peace” in even the narrowest sense, we are faced with an unacceptable
dilemma.

To default to the concept of a “lesser of two evils” which
may take precedence over conscience is not only a tempting response, it is the
same idea that fueled our current situation in the first place: two broadly
disliked, even despised, presidential candidates, neither of whom would have
likely stood a chance simply on their own merits, have become their parties’
nominees largely on the premise that the other must be defeated at any cost. The urgent tones in which this is
proclaimed tend to reach fever pitch during an election year in the best of
times; now it can be noted almost without hyperbole that they’ve become
downright apocalyptic. But the grimly good news, contrary to the prevailing
mood, is that whatever happens this November, we will not all die come January,
as Solidarity Hall’s Daniel Schwindt wrote [1]
earlier this year, because the president is simply not as omnipotent as we tend
to think:

“When something goes wrong, it’s ‘the Obama administration,’
or ‘the Bush administration,’ or whatever. In reality, the President is not
really all that powerful, at least in the present context. Yes, he’s certainly more
powerful than the monarchs of old, but he’s connected to hundreds of other
monarchs whose powers exceed his own, if not individually then certainly as a
collective. Taken together, we as Americans have really traded the ancient
tyrant for a few hundred tyrants constantly at odds with one another. And so
the popular idea that everything that happens in the world is something that
Obama either ‘made happen,’ through his omnipotence, or ‘let happen,’ through
his negligence, is an absurd exaggeration of both his office and his human
powers. To call him a devil or a saint is in both cases the result of a
grandiose view of the office. So…what does this have to do with the present
situation? Well, if someone like Trump should win, and if our normal assumptions
about the Presidency were actually true, then we’re all going to die, and fast.
However, in the same way and for the same reasons that we didn’t all die when
Obama became President (despite how many times Fox News promised we
would), we aren’t all going to die if Trump wins either. Things will, by and
large, carry on much like they always have. Terrorist attacks will
continue. Immigration will increase. The family will decay. The economy will
ride its roller coaster. A new flu virus with a scary new name will appear on
the scene. All this will continue even if Trump wins, or if Hillary wins, or if
Bernie wins. And that will, or at least it should, lead to a valuable
revelation for the American people. And that revelation will be that the
President does not hold the world in his hands.”

And yes, many people unfortunately will die – in deserts and nursing homes, on foreign soil and the
streets of our cities, in execution chambers and their mothers’ wombs – no
matter who sits in the Oval Office. And make no mistake, every death resulting
from public policies that fail to respect the dignity of all human beings will
be a terrible tragedy, all the more so because they are not, after all,
inevitable. By refusing to choose between two candidates who represent an unconscionable
“seamless shroud” – the opposite of the “seamless garment” of the Consistent
Life Ethic – I am not advocating defeatism but perspective. It is of course a
good act to attempt to move society toward a broader respect for human life and
dignity by casting a vote, as circumstances and conscience allow. But it is far
from the only act we can perform toward such an end, or the most influential. This
should be at the same time consoling and challenging: there is much more to be
done to defend human dignity against violence in its manifold forms, starting
within our own communities and at every regional and organizational level,
before and after and well beyond voting – and will be whatever the outcome of
this and every future election.